I have been roleplaying for fifteen years now, fully half my life. In order to take my mind off of how old that makes me, I have decided to write some articles recollecting the best and worst of the last decade and a half that I've spent roleplaying.
I want to start with some of my most memorable characters. These are characters that I've played as PCs and as NPCs. Some of them have been recycled a couple of times. Here ya go...
Calamar Veladorna: Half-elf assassin. Played using D&D 2nd Ed.
Calamar is almost six feet tall. He has pure white hair and vibrant blue eyes that seem to glow when he is angry or excited. He has a few spells under his belt, mostly from the fire college. He is a trained killer and could be said to be a multiple Dan Martial artist. He prefers close up face to face kills rather than using poison or missile weapons.
Of course I'll start with Calamar, my blogs is named after him after all. He popped up about thirteen years ago as an npc in the City of the Three Suns. I was running an adventure for a friend of mine who was playing a Paladin.
The City of Three Suns, also known as the City of White, was where the Temple of Three Suns was located and the center of all civilized religion. On the surface the city is clean, well organized, and a shinning example of goodness throughout the land. Under the surface, hidden from the eyes of the Church and the city's officials, lies the dark underbelly of this dangerous city.
My friend's character was a newly minted Paladin, very naive and earnest in his belief.
Someone started assassinating visiting ambassadores in the Castle. Paladins were stationed within the castle in an effort to bolster the defenses and to help stop the murderer.
Calamar was the assassin, of course. He used disguises, trickery, a little magic, and a bold ruthless disregard to others in order to succeed. He met the Paladin after killing the newest of the diplomats. The Paladin followed him though the castle, over the wall, and into the city.
Calamar led the young Paladin into an underground fighting arena (bloodsprts were illegal) where the Paladin witness a young boy and an old man, tied together at the wrist, slashing at each other with razors. Calamar escaped through the crowd.
The Paladin made it his mission in life to bring Calamar to justice. He came close several times but Calamar always managed to get away. Following and tracking the assassin taught the Paladin some brutal truths about life. It also lost him the powers that came with being a Paladin as he became more and more like the man that he was tracking.
Unfortunately, this campaigne was never finished. However, Calamar was such a fun, memorable character to play that have made him the main character in a novel and I use him for other things, such as this blog.
Fav quote:
"Go ahead, try your worst!"
"I plan to."Void: Prototype Cybernetic Search and Destroy. Played with Cyberpunk.
Void is a little over seven feet tall and weighs close to 400 lbs. He has a humanoid body that resembles a cat walking on it's hind legs. His brain and spine are still human, but that's it. He is comfortable walking on two legs or four and he has a prehensile tail.
His claws are actually grappeling hooks that he can shoot our individually. The end of his tail flowers open exposing the barrel of a gun. A favorite trick of his is to stab someone with his tail, open the gun and fire it while it's still inside the person.
His name is Void because he has absolutely no memory of his former self. During the course of the game he would have started remembering things, using dreams and flashbacks. He had a love interest in his past, but that is all that I gave the GM.
Unfortunately the GM wasn't very good and couldn't control the group. The group as a whole sucked, there was only one other player there worth his salt.
The game went nowhere for a few months and shut down. This was about eight years ago.
"I have recently acquired a new gun. Do you want it?""Whoa! Where'd you get this?"
"A police officer.""Cops don't give people guns..."
"He had no further use for it.""What happened to....""His death was most satisfactory..."
Sebastion Markone: Mentally Damaged Psionic kid. Gurps Fantasy.
There were two versions of this character that I played with the same GM. A child of 14 years and an adult. Both characters had the same past, they were just at different times.
Sebastion's mother died giving birth to him, a fact that caused his father to hate him. Sebastion also suffered from a curse called Lifebane. Anything that weighed less than a pound would die if it got within ten feet of Sebastion. This included grass, leaves, bugs, snakes, kittens, frogs and a host of other things.
Other kids picked on Sebastion because of his curse and the fact that he was small for his age. Sebastion was completely friendless growing up and had to learn to defend himself.
Sebastion's father drank to forget his wife, and beat Sebastion to punish him for killing her. One too many blows to the head unlocked a dormant psionic ability that Sebastion realized and started to use.
One night Sebastion's father accused the boy of sorcery. He had caught Sebastion practicing his new-found abilities.
The village threw him out. He was twelve.
For the past two years he has wandered. That's where the adventure picked him up.
Unfortunately, the GM for this character was, at best, sucky. He was also extremely chuavinistic. The other two players in the group were women, playing female characters. Both characters were older and more experienced than my character. For reasons known only to the GM, he hired my character as the leader of our group and left it to me to hire the girls. One of the female characters was 16 and the other was 24 years old. Imagine a fourteen year old trying to boss around someone ten years older.
"You're the people that we are looking for."
Sebastion waves his hand. "We aren't the people that you are looking for.""These aren't the people that we are looking for.""Let them go.""Let them g... Wait! Seargent, I don't feel very good could you..."
"You feel fine.""Never mind Seargent, I feel fine. Let them go."
(You could actually see the GM get ready to explode when I did this and we escaped from his carefully plotted trap ;-)
Berlioz: Mercenary. Gurps fantasy.
Berlioz is a half-elf. He has jet black hair from his father and the emerald eyes of his mother. His father was a Captain in the military. He is slightly built and small, standing 5' 7". Being a half-elf, he has aged much slower than a human would and at thirty, he looks fifteen. He is extremely intelligent and loves military history.
His father is retired and Berlioz decided to follow in his footsteps. He joined the military as infantry. He quicly bounced up to corporal due to his command presence and maturity.
He met and fell in love with a young woman who worked at a local inn as a waitress. She was an orphan and moved in with him. They got engaged and were set to marry when Berlioz' unit was shipped out to the Border Wars.
While Berlioz was gone, his Captain, a lecherous man name Stanton, approached Berlioz' girl. She turned him down and he offered her money. She turned him down again but he was very persistant. Eventually he informed her that he could command Berlioz' unit into the worst of the fighting. He informed her that it was her choice, but that the life expectancy in that area is measured in days.
While this was all going on, Berlioz' unit had reached the war. They were assigned to the worst area and suffered losses imediately. The Lt. was taken prisoner and the Seargent was killed. Berlioz led his squad of eight men in quick raids, freeing other men. Within a few days Berlioz had a small company of almost fourty men under his command, including officers.
He led an attack on the enemies main camp and captured their leader. He forced a treaty and headed back home.
Unfortunately, Berlioz arrived home just as his fiance submitted to Stanton's advances in order to insure that Berlioz gets safely transported home.
Berlioz walked in on them in the act and attacked Stanton in a furious rage. Berlioz' fiance tried seperating the two and was killed in the struggle. Berlioz was arrested and charged with her death and with the attempted murder of his commanding officer.
He was sentenced to death.
Fortunately, his men were so loyal that they stormed the prison and freed Berlioz. He has wandered for a few years, taking odd jobs as a mercenary. It was in this capacity that he met a and befreinded a small boy of thirteen named Shopan. It turns out that Shopan is the ruler of a small southern kingdom. His uncle had murdered his father and usurped the throne. Shopan had fled and was slowly working his way back.
Berlioz rescued him from his uncle, disposed of his identical twin brother and those nobles who had known and supported the plot. Shopan rewarded Berlioz by making him a General and ordering him to design and train a special type of warrior who would be able to do anything from assassination, to hostage rescue, beach landing, ship to ship combat, spy work, or anything else that was needed.
Berlioz made up and headed the Black Dragons. Basically a fantasy special forces company. It was cool.
"Give me a sword and I'll leave you lying in a crimson pool of your own hearts blood."Hung So Lo: A Chinese Triad Muscle/Mage for Shadowrun.
So Lo Hung, or Hung So Lo if you pronounce his name as the Chinese do with the last name first, was born in China and raised in the American city of Seattle. He is very polite and good at martial arts. He is extremely new to actually doing anything in the world as he has spent his whole life in training. But he's eager to learn.
"I apologize if my name has distracted you or somehow brought you some amusement. I am simply here to help a friend."I have two other Shadowrun characters that I love. I can't remember their names right now, I'll write morwe on them later.
That's all of the characters that I could think of off the top of my head. But like I said, I've been playing for 15 years now.
